My name is Besan
Becoming a Person is my home.
"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.."
Albert Camus once wrote..
Ideas are born in the luxury of a mind unburdened—free to wander, reflect, and reimagine. Camus’s line lingered in my mind because it spoke to me. I was one of the lucky children who had the luxury of doing nothing—of simply observing the world and trying to make sense of how it all works, weaving new threads between the pieces. I didn’t have a revolving door, but I had my grandparent’s magical window and a lot of time to reflect.
In the heart of damascus..
… thirty-five years ago, my grandparents’ window opened onto a theater of human connection: children playing, neighbors chatting, bustling souqs, ancient streets, thieves and priests, good and evil — the full human act.
As I absorbed the outer world, my grandparents’ home held me like a warm womb — loving, and grounding. Books covered the living room walls: history, politics, philosophy, social studies, and Freud. I spent my days absorbed in my granparents’ stories, discussions of culture and mythology, listening to music, decoding the language of human connection, and weaving dreams of a better world.
Those days left me with a seed — something I couldn’t yet articulate, but a quiet sense of calling toward the human condition and its mysteries.
That vague idea gently guided my life, as I spent the years chasing it, uncovering it, and trying to give it form.
experience
I graduated from Damascus University with a bachelor’s degree in Counseling Psychology.
During my final year, I began working with UNICEF as a therapist in our community psychosocial clinic for Iraqi refugees and underserved population.
After being awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, I was able to fulfill my dream of studying about war trauma, and criminal behavior by pursuing a master’s degree in Forensic Psychology.
I returned home to Syria immediately after graduation to work with the International Medical Corps, providing Psychological First Aid to Syrian war victims in shelters and camps around Damascus during the height of the crisis.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine returning to the United States as a refugee and a survivor of war. The grief of losing home and the quiet ache of uprooting were heavy to bear, yet I found meaning in continuing my work with Syrian refugees around the world — transforming pain into a shared path of healing.
Motherhood transformed my quest. From striving to understand the roots of criminal behavior to the roots of optimal behavior. Endeavoring not just to make sense of the world, but to help shape it anew, for myself, my clients, and my girls.
Throughout this heart-wrenching journey, my childhood idea sustained me — offering a sense of purpose and directing my search for healing through the lenses of science, literature, and art.
After years of exploration — through research, reflection, and clinical work — my idea began to take shape. I discovered that optimal well-being can only be reached by integrating all the parts of the human experience — through a holistic and culturally rooted practice.
Becoming a person
was born
From an idea with a “ridiculous beginning” like Camus said, an idea that summed up a whole life through a magical window: an all-encompassing, integrative psychotherapy approach was born. With the dream to create a better world for all: the very world my grandparents and I dreamed of, thirty-five years ago.
Because what do you do with an idea?